


Dyed Shards

by fletchley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 11:21:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17765849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fletchley/pseuds/fletchley
Summary: A single crystalline moment - time itself suspended - has a million facets, a million different perspectives. Collection of experimental unrelated stories.





	Dyed Shards

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate Universe. If I missed any errors during my proofread, do comment and let me know.

There's something about the woman who comes to meet him every day that makes him uneasy. Amnesia, he was told - they told him he was lucky, the car he was in had killed his roommate. He does not remember the roommate, he does not remember the car ride, he does not remember his family the woman who comes every week to visit him. He remembers nothing. They had told him the woman was a former friend. His only one, it seems, as there is nobody else who visits him. What a sad life he must have led.

The woman speaks little. The first day, she talk - something fluttering underneath her casual voice that frightens him. She tells him it took the others - the ones in the white robes - ages to teach him the basics of life again, how to eat and drink and use the loo. He does not remember that either - he knows how to eat and drink and use the loo, but he also knows how to read, and what a dog looks like, and what broomsticks are, and the difference between spiders and butterflies. He can count up to ten in Latin, which makes no sense to him. Why would they teach him all that as well?

After the first day, she stops responding to his questions - which pisses him off. He yells at her, yells and yells and yells. She does not come the next day, and he despairs. To his staggering relief, she does return - with a plate filled something sweet and yet spicy. She calls it pumpkin pasty. It tastes familiar to his tongue. He apologises too. She says nothing, but grips his hand with her warmer one comfortingly. Silent company is better than none, he decides, and resolves to be careful about how he behaves in the future. The idea of her leaving fills his veins with ice, and makes him sick to his stomach.

She looks normal enough, based on his limited knowledge: frizzy brown hair and ordinary clothes and a sad smile always lingering on her face. He hates the last thing - he's made her laugh unexpectedly a few times, the sight of the corners of her eyes crinkling makes his eyes sting for some reason. Despite all that, there's something about her that seems alien, he can't put his finger on it. 

Sometimes she brings him books, she tells him he loved them before the accident - he does not remember them, and they're filled with fairytales and ridiculous stories about magic. However, he is lonely, and so he obliges and reads quietly to please her, when she comes by. After a while, he finds himself reading even after she's gone for the day.

There was no calendar in his small little room. They did not give him one when he was placed here, so he did not ask. The passage of time is strange without anything marking it - he had told the woman that, after a few visits, where he accepted that she was not going to respond or reply to him. Now, it's normal for him to speak out loud in the room when she comes. He knows she listens - the next day, she had brought him a calendar and hanged it on the wall opposite his tiny bed. Then she had broken her silence, and taught him what birthdays meant. She told him his birthday was the 1st of March. She fell silent once more when he asked about hers. 

Time drags on even more now that he can mark the days as they pass. There's a strange clock on his wall, above the calendar, that has many hands and makes no sense to him - but it ticks. At first that had soothed him, but now it scares him as well.

The woman's smile grows sadder and sadder. 

_We can't keep doing this, Harry. We have to tell him. We can't go on like this. His family thinks he's **dead** , for God's sake._


End file.
